NVIDIA unleashes Quad SLI that you can DIY

For people who simply must have the ultimate in graphics and gaming …

Way back in 1998, in the early days of 3D acceleration, 3DFX released a feature for their new Voodoo 2 card called Scan-Line Interleave, or SLI, that allowed the user to plug in two of the PCI-based graphics cards for extra gaming performance. Each video card handled the rendering of half of the scan lines on the screen (one for the odds, another for the evens) and while performance was not exactly doubled, it was the fastest gaming solution available at the time.

Fast forward to today, and NVIDIA, who purchased 3DFX's assets in 2000, are continuing the SLI tradition with the release of Quad SLI cards and drivers, allowing any system builder or PC enthusiast to construct their own turbocharged graphics system. Previously, Quad SLI systems had only been available from select OEMs such as Alienware or Voodoo PC.

So how much will all of this set you back? First, you need an SLI-compatible motherboard with four free PCI Express slots, such as the nForce 590 SLI for AMD processors, or the nForce4 SLI X16 for Intel CPUs. Then you need to get the graphics cards—but you don't need to buy four, as NVIDIA has thoughtfully released the GeForce 7950 GX2 series which are themselves two cards tied together in a single bundle (this still requires four free slots, however, as the cards are double-wide). You'll need a hefty power supply to run all this: NVIDIA has a list of certified power supplies from 700 to 1,100 Watts, which is getting into hairdryer territory.

Quad SLI motherboard with cards installed. Image courtesy NVIDIA.

The graphics cards alone will run from $1,000 to $1,200. Add the motherboard and power supply and the total is up to $1,650, and that's before adding a CPU, RAM, and other components. What will all this money get you? Well, sadly it won't bring exactly four times the frame rates in games, but it will allow the well-heeled gaming enthusiast to run existing games at extremely high resolutions with all kinds of special effects and antialiasing cranked up to the hilt. NVIDIA tested DOOM 3 running at 2560 by 1600 resolution with 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering, and benchmarked it at 108.9 frames per second. Some games benefit from SLI more than others, but most will exhibit a significant frame rate increase at these high resolutions. Whether or not this increase is worth the extra cost is a different question.